SDCA and RAAKS

Stakeholder Dialogue and Concerted Action (SDCA) is an active and facilitated approach to bring different actors to strategic consensus on how to work together on specific issues of shared concern.

It is doing this by making explicit the different opinions, perceptions, preoccupations, assumptions, and judgments among the actors involved.

It identifies opportunities to improve the exchange of information, social organization, and decision-making between stakeholders in order to create the proper conditions for innovations. At the same time it will contribute to create awareness with respect to constraints and opportunities that affect the performance of relevant actors.

SDCA will identify potential actors who do or could act effectively to remove constraints and make use of opportunities for innovation. Indeed SDCA enhances institutional and technological innovation through active networking, involving all relevant actors including community members, governments, NGOs, academic institutions, and the private sector. Where innovation implies change it also implies resistance to such change. Innovation can be seen as the outcome of a mutual learning and social change process taking place among a large number of autonomous actors in mutual interdependence challenging them to create conditions through which innovation can take place.

Creation of stakeholder platforms working as a resource coalition towards a common goal in a specific arena (e.g. water, agricultural or community development), is not an easy job. Rapid Appraisal of Agricultural Knowledge Systems (RAAKS)[1], forms a first step for analysis and decision-making in SDCA.

On the basis of the RAAKS analysis platforms are formed of key stakeholders who together support a specific development process, having a common agenda and shared interests. It is a participatory action research approach developed by Wageningen University in the early 1990-ies. It focuses on clarifying the role and responsibilities of all major actors working in a certain thematic field, such as community water management or agricultural development, identifying possible constraints in coordination, cooperation and communication, and developing appropriate actions.

RAAKS follows an interactive process with the stakeholder institutions (inside and outside local communities) to draw them into the action research process and encourage ownership of its outcome. The study team makes use of a number of participatory Tools that use checklists of key issues in different areas (“Windows of Analysis”) such as vision and mandate of the organization as related to study area, tasks and responsibilities, strategic interest, development agendas, institutional structure and resources, information flows and decision patterns.

The RAAKS process culminates in a workshop where views of respective actors or institutions are brought together, shared and systematically compared as a basis for joint problem review and action planning.

[1] Resource Guide to RAAKS. Paul Engel and Monique Salomon, 1997. A Participatory Actor-oriented Methodology on Networking for Innovation and Stakeholder Analysis (KIT/CTA/STOAS).